Author: Crystal Broughan, Intellectual Property Attorney

It’s a question that has been on everyone’s mind: can a monkey own the copyright to its own selfie? A recent case set out to find the answer. The plaintiff was Naruto, a crested macaque living in an Indonesian reserve. The defendant was David Slater, a photographer who left his camera unattended, only to have Naruto pick it up and snap some (pretty adorable) selfies. So, who owns the copyright to those images? The People […]

I recently went through the process of filing trademark applications for my law firm’s trademarks. Now I am receiving all kinds of scam mail from companies claiming to publish international catalogues of trademarks and offering global trademark protection. I realized that my clients receive these scam mailings every time a new trademark application is filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. So below is a list of scam mail I received, along with […]

Recently, I had the pleasure of attending the Defense Research Institute (DRI) Intellectual Property Litigation seminar in Denver, Colorado. Simon Tam was one of the featured speakers and he spoke about his journey to the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Tam v Matal. (See blog article Disparaging Words and ‘The Slants’ on March 8, 2018) Simon Tam and his legal teams were the persistent force that led to the U.S. Supreme Court issuing […]

If you or your company have been featured in an article, you probably want to share it with the world. That’s understandable. But you must be careful how you do it. You do not automatically have the right to make copies and distribute an article just because you were featured or quoted in it. That is true even if the entire article is about you. You still need to get permission from the author or […]

World Intellectual Property Day is celebrated today! The event was established to highlight how intellectual property rights encourage and support creativity and innovation. This year, the theme is “Powering Change: Women in Innovation and Creativity,” celebrating the contributions of women around the world who are driving change and shaping the future. So, it feels appropriate that Marks Gray IP lawyer Crystal Broughan just had dinner with the talented women on the IP Litigation Committee at the […]